Max and Trude Schönthal Heller discuss growing up in Vienna, Austria, in the 1920s and ’30s, and the hardships and losses their families experienced as a result of the Anschluss, the German invasion of Austria in 1938. They describe how they and their family members escaped Austria and made their separate ways to the United States. Max, by chance, had met Mary Mills of Greenville, South Carolina, while she was visiting Vienna in 1937. He appealed to her for help in leaving Austria. Mary contacted Shep Saltzman, a Jewish man who owned a shirt factory in Greenville, and he sponsored Max’s immigration and gave him a job. Max and Trude, who met at a summer resort in Austria in 1937, married in the United States in 1942, and Trude joined Max in Greenville, where they raised their three children. Max served on Greenville’s city council from 1969-1971, and then was elected mayor for two terms, during which he spearheaded a major revitalization of the city’s downtown.
Doris Levkoff Meddin recalls her experiences growing up in Augusta, Georgia, where her parents, Shier and Rebecca Rubin Levkoff, ran The Smart Set Dress Shop. Shier and Rebecca, descendants of Russian and Polish immigrants, were born in Charleston, South Carolina. They and their children frequently visited Charleston and summered on Sullivan’s Island and the Isle of Palms. Doris married Hyman Meddin, who was born and raised in Savannah and ran a meat-packing business in Charleston. While raising three children, she devoted her time and energy to philanthropic work. Among her many contributions to local organizations, Doris helped to establish the Pink Ladies, a volunteer group at Roper Hospital, and served as president of the Charleston Area Mental Health Association. As a member of the National Council of Jewish Women, she assisted German refugee Margot Freudenberg after she arrived in Charleston.
Helen "Elkie" Rosenshein recalls childhood friends and neighbors from the 1920s and ’30s in Charleston, South Carolina. Her parents, Sam and Hannah Garfinkel, immigrants from Divin, Russia, followed Sam’s brother to the coastal city and opened a mattress factory. She describes the traditional Jewish foods served by her mother, who kept a kosher home with the help of an African American woman named Louisa. After working at the Charleston Navy Yard, Helen and her good friend, Freda Goldberg, spent a year in San Francisco, where they took advantage of local cultural events and volunteered at the Jewish Community Center.
Olga Garfinkel Weinstein, born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1917, describes her childhood, including her siblings, the Jewish Community Center, and the traditional Jewish foods her mother served. Olga experienced no anti-Semitism as a schoolgirl, but discusses her awareness, as a young woman during World War II, of what was happening to the Jews in Europe.
Brothers David and Sam Draisen, descendants of Russian immigrants from the Draisen and Poliakoff families, describe the family jewelry and music businesses and their experiences growing up in Anderson, South Carolina, in the years after World War II. They also discuss the history of Andersons Jewish congregation, Bnai Israel, and provide details about their careers and immediate families.
Sura Wolff Wengrow grew up in Allendale, South Carolina, in the first quarter of the twentieth century where her father, Henry Wolff, a German immigrant, ran a general merchandise store. In 1901, Henry married Rachel Pearlstine of Branchville, South Carolina. The family kept kosher and observed the holidays, but Sura did not receive a Jewish education, formal or otherwise. With no other Jewish families in town, she socialized, as a child, with gentiles and attended their church events, a pattern of assimilation she would repeat while living in Allendale during the early years of her marriage to Sam Wengrow of Beaufort, South Carolina. Longing for a connection to Judaism, and wanting her children to be involved in synagogue life, the Wengrows moved to Columbia when their oldest son was twelve. Note: This transcript appears to have been heavily edited with corrections, deletions, and additions by the interviewee and/or her son during proofing. Therefore, the transcript differs somewhat from the audio.
Sylvan and Meyer Rosen, brothers and natives of Georgetown, South Carolina, recall growing up in the coastal city and socializing regularly with gentiles. The Jewish congregation, Beth Elohim, too small to support a rabbi, received support from Charleston’s Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. The brothers name of some of Georgetown’s Jewish families and provide background on their extended families, the Lewenthals, Weinbergs, and Rosens. Their father, Harry Rosen, and their uncle Albert Schneider, who married sisters Dora and Fannie Lewenthal, operated The New Store, which initially sold men’s and ladies’ clothing and later furniture and appliances. Besides practicing law in Georgetown, both men held political office—Sylvan as mayor and Meyer as a state legislator.
Leila "Sugie" Rosenfeld Einstein, born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1936, grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, at a time when there were few Jewish youth in the small Upcountry city. One of three children of Cyvia Shapero and William Rosenfeld, Leila talks about her childhood. Her family belonged to Congregation Beth Israel, the Orthodox synagogue that later affiliated with the Conservative Movement. She attended Women's College in North Carolina for a year, then transferred to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where she met her husband, Nathan Einstein. They married in 1957 and raised three sons in Greenville. Nathan joined Leila's father in his business, William Rosenfeld Insurance, and later, with their son Dan, formed a new insurance company, Rosenfeld Einstein. The interviewee discusses several aspects of Greenville's organized Jewish community, including cemetery upkeep and changes in practices at Temple of Israel, Greenville's Reform synagogue (she and her husband are members of Temple of Israel and Congregation Beth Israel). She considers the possibility of a merger of the two congregations, a topic that has been raised among members of both groups in the past. Einstein and interviewer Sandra Lee Rosenblum describe the effect Chabad's presence has had on the Jewish community in their respective cities of Greenville and Charleston. Leila recounts her impression of events surrounding Autherine Lucy's enrollment as the first black student at the University of Alabama.
Lillie Goldstein Lubin grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s and ’30s. Her parents, Abraham and Bessie Lazerovsky Goldstein, emigrants from Russia and Lithuania, ran a shoe shop in Charleston that evolved into a men’s clothing store. As a youngster, Lillie’s singing talent was recognized by her mother and teachers. She began taking voice lessons when she was nine and performed at a number of local venues as a child and teenager, notably, singing with the Charleston Oratorio Society in a performance of Haydn’s Creation. Lillie, whose stage name as a professional opera singer in New York was Lisa Lubin, discusses her early training and the artists who influenced her most. During her singing career, she performed in several languages, including Yiddish and German. She describes Charleston’s Jewish community in the years before World War II as “unique” because of the “camaraderie” and the “kinship” that she felt. Lillie recalls her mother’s visits to the mikveh, attending Rabbi Axelman’s Hebrew school, going to Folly Beach to listen to bands, and the black Charlestonians who worked for the family, both in their home and at their store. She married Herman Lubin of New York, whom she met in Charleston while he was working at the navy yard as an engineer. During the course of the interview, Lillie sings a few lines from some of her favorite songs.
Freida Zaglin Kaplan, born in 1908 in Wilmington, North Carolina, is joined in this interview by her nephew and his wife, Jeff and Erica Lieberman Zaglin. Freida's father, Charles Zaglin (Zaglinski), trained as a rabbi in Vilna, Lithuania, before immigrating to the United States around 1907. Soon after he sent for his wife, Evelyn Rose Goldberg, and their son, Sol, and they moved from one southern town to another, wherever Charles could find work as a rabbi, shochet, and mohel. They were a family of six, living in Greenville, South Carolina, when Evelyn died. Charles gave up his position as a rabbi, opened a grocery business, and sent the children to live with their aunts and uncles: Sol and Freida to Massachusetts; Harry (Jeff's father) to Tennessee; and Joseph to North Carolina. They returned home at different times over the next few years. When Freida came back to Greenville at age thirteen, her father had remarried. His second wife, Annie Glickman Zaglin, came to the marriage with four children; she and Charles had four more. Frieda discusses her father's grocery business, which, after World War I, included an abattoir. The Zaglins were members of the Orthodox congregation, Beth Israel, in Greenville. Freida remembers people coming from the surrounding small towns for High Holiday services conducted in the Woodmen of the World hall before the synagogue was built in the early 1930s. She married Nathaniel Kaplan in 1931; she had known him as a child while living with her aunt in New England. The Kaplans lived in Massachusetts for about six years, then moved to Greenville after Charles Zaglin became ill. Freida recalls how she made the sukkahs for Beth Israel, and how the women of the congregation prepared the chickens for the synagogue seders. A member of the chevra kadisha for many years, she describes the process of preparing a body for burial. Jeff discusses how his mother kept a kosher home when he was growing up.
